This invention relates to an apparatus for supporting lift cars.
It is now well accepted that to achieve a good standard of comfort for the passengers of a high speed lift it is necessary to ensure that the lift car is appropriately suspended.
An often used technique for lift car suspension is to mount the car in a cage structure suspended by hoist ropes within a lift well and provided with wheels or rollers arranged to engage with rails fixed to the walls of the lift well.
To prevent the transmission to the car of shock and vibration generated in the cage as a result of its movement over imperfections in the rails, wind turbulence and rope vibration, rubber blocks have been used to mount the car within the cage.
This approach has met with a degree of success and is widely followed. However, the disadvantage of using such a rubber block system is that the natural frequency of horizontal vibration of the lift car mounted using such a system is higher than that which has been found to give better comfort to the passengers.
The present invention is a lift car suspension system based on the "Ball's-point" linkage a diagrammatic representation of which is illustrated in FIG. 1 annexed hereto and as hereinafter discussed.